I actually worked on the Poseidon engine back when I was at BISim for serious game Virtual Battlespace 2 (VBS2) which was the spin off built for military training.
The codebase here is so much cleaner and better organized than the version I remember wrestling with on a daily basis, and if you remember how buggy and unstable the DayZ launch was for users it can all be traced back to this since it was never envisioned to live as long and scale as far as it did. Fun fact Poseidon was the original internal game name they were building in 1999 before changing the game name and renaming the engine to Real Virtuality.
It's also easy to forget just how far ahead of its time this was since this shipped large open worlds with maps that were 12.5 km × 12.5 km and that was really easy to mod with a runtime scripting language SQF, not a separate mission editor. This was all in 2001, which is three years before Half-Life 2 would come out.
I worked with a guy at the Research Park in Central Florida who used to work for Bohemia Interactive (I forget on what). That's kind of funny, I remember him noting that it was a PITA to work with the Arma codebase.
Yes, that was the the place, I was one of the first engineers in that office but we got up to about 50 full-time devs at the peak before they started getting moved over to Europe for lower cost labor.
It was a total PITA to work with but not due to the engine itself but some choices that were made over time to use IN CODE FEATURE SWITCHES since it was before git and branches. There were thousands of features added and controlled with statements like this:
#define ENABLE_FEATURE
#ifdef ENABLE_FEATURE
// New feature implemented
#else
// Old code that is left around but probabbly won't work if the feature gets disabled
#endif
Then multiply this choice by every...single...line...of code that had to be changed for one feature. It was nightmare until we could adopt and transition to Git with branches and clean it up.
Hehe, yeah I'm not sure when John Stewart would have worked there or what the pain points were for him, but he worked there for a bit. I met him when we both worked for KeyW (which got bought out by Jacobs) back in 2017. I think Bohemia is still in Orlando, I met someone in 2021 ish that was trying to get me to apply to work there, but I had just become the tech lead for the eCommerce Platform at Red Lobster at the time so I passed on that suggestion, plus I was fully remote.
That does sound like a nightmare to work with, especially since there's a lot of context switching going on too. Too much mental overhead.
I discovered Arma 2 when I was around 12. Its insane how much content was created with the limitations of the game engine. I also got into SWE partly due to hacking together SQF scripts :)
I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for Bohemia Interactive. Their games have always had a charming “designed by a software engineer” feel, which I appreciate.
Also, Operation Flashpoint was the reason I learnt to code and ended up having a career a software engineer, so I owe BI for that. My first real foray into programming was writing scripts, specifically to trigger unguided bomb releases from planes onto moving ground targets using some shoddy trigonometry as a 14 year old kid.
I have a lot of fond memories of that game. I still remember being awed by some of the mods created by this guy: https://kegetys.fi His name has lived rent free in my head for 2 decades now. Legend.
An Arma mod on my resume helped me eke out the interview for my first full time tech job. As janky as the engine was, I have a soft spot for it. It's a game/platform that _wants_ the user to customize it and have a stake in its technology.
Funny, I had a similar experience. I wrote a script that enabled players to "call in" mortar support, by looking at the target and selecting a distance. Also using shoddy trigonometry and also one of my earliest programming experiences. Very basic from today's perspective, but I was mighty proud back then and so hooked!
Same here; I remember playing ARMA 3 during the early-2013 public alpha, which was an eye-opening look at how the gaming sausage is made in real time (and before Early Access was as established a concept as it is now).
I was rather disappointed when I heard that they had been acquired by BAE Systems, but on further inspection it seems like that was only the BI Simulations arm (responsible for VBS), now rebranded as OneArc. My guess is that a release like this wouldn't have happened were they not still independent.
I was a member of the arma 3 on unix (mostly linux) community before Proton was released and somewhat usable. The BI community managers were very forthcoming when we had questions and they also enabled proton support for battleye as soon as it became feasable. Definitely not the worst game studio regarding linux support.
Not being a big gamer, I can'comment with much authority. I've played a bunch of Modern Warfare(s) and Battlefields, and Squad. But they all feel pointless to me when ARMA 3 exists.
It's _so_ janky but in my mind way more immersive for reasons I just can't fully explain, though they are something to do with the fact that good comms is the key to fun and success. It's also got a pretty major learning curve...
COD/Battlefield and Arma are two different genres. Squad is somewhat in Arma's genre. I can't stand Arma's movement anymore. The closest thing I've found to the unique parts of Arma is Hell Let Loose
playing on a certain private server using sog:pf cdlc + the alive mod with a group of people who knew our shit was genuinely some of the most intense and immersive gaming experiences i have ever had.
you're pinned down as a 10 person group in a jungle clearing, everyone hunkering down behind some fallen down trees cos that's your only cover ... you're surrounded by enemy in all directions, the whole team is running low on ammo, tracer rounds flying over everyone's heads, your medic is wounded and trying to patch himself up ... you're trying to call in air support using only grids and compass bearing desperately hoping that you've got the grids right and the human pilots don't fuck it up and wipe out the whole team ... you've gotta try to organize some sort of extract helo in all of this mess, but chances are they'll get shot down if they try to extract you here ... suddenly mortar rounds start going off all around you because the ai have communicated your location back to the mortar installation you were trying to recon ...
as team lead, what do you do? what's your decision? how are we getting out of this mess? you don't get to think, there's no time to think, thinking is death. what do you do?
Did ShackTac for a while. I agree but also in so many ways it's not immersive at all.
Like all the years the physics were just busted and tanks would flip over and explode because the engine couldn't handle the terrain geometry. Really sucks the fun out of your all-night commitment when that ends your mission for the night "because realism".
Getting a vehicle squad assigment was pretty much an 80% chance this was going to happen to you at some point.
Very eye opening experience though. It's disturbingly easy to mess up your navigation and radio comms and start having friendly squads shooting each other when obscured by trees...
The wrong squad leader (and/or inattentive teammates) will get you killed as fast as anything.
If you want to learn rigid comms discipline, that is the right place to learn it.
I agree. I've played Arma 3 for more than a whole decade now. Most of it comes down to the open large scale combined arms experience not being available in any other recent video game from a first/third person perspective. There's now Arma Reforger, but it understandably lacks content.
That's kinda scary then considering how toxic some of the chat is! For me I think I simultaneously like the irreverence, but also the fact people take it very seriously. It's a weird combination. But yeah, sometimes the banter is not good.
stay away from official / public servers, find communities via discords etc that play the way you think you might like. some of the bigger communities have rules against the kind of toxic you get on public servers etc.
IMHO the ARMA3 campaign is quite alright (once you realize how much freedom you have between the missions), also the Contact DLC was pretty great IMHO.
But where ARMA3 really shines is single-player sandbox mods like DUWS-X.
I believe this game had some interesting anti cheat, it would still let you play if it knew it was cracked but would just make your aim worse and worse until you gave up.
One thing is 120bit RSA (readily broken with a graphing calculator at the time of release), another thing is the provenance of the RSA implementation code in the original binary.
I learned HTML thanks to Operation Flashpoint so that I could write mission briefings in the editor...one thing led to another, and I have a successful career as a software developer. Thanks, Bohemia Interactive.
I remember the day I bought that game at my local dealer. It looked amazing and nobody told me about it, my friends were playing FFVII and stuff like that. After installing it, it was mindblowing, the mission editor was incredible with infinite possibilities. When you think about it, that engine and it's SDK were really advanced features and concepts. I mean Rainbow Six had a mission planner, but OPF, with it's editor and addons was an inifinite sandbox. Good memories.
I used to open up mods (I seem to recall them being in "PBO" files) and tweaked around the script code to change things and make my own weapons and such. Also a formative experience on my path to becoming a developer.
This game was on my cousin's dad PC about 20 years ago. There were no name on the icon, it was just titled "war" (assumingly by cousin). Later I got Arma: Armed Assault on Steam, when all my friends played Arma 2/DayZ and I couldn't, because my PC was a potato. Spent hours on sandbox editor making big warfare.
This is what stop killing games seek turned up to 11.
From Steam demo description:
> This release is free, and it is two things at once.
> A playable demo
> A self-contained slice of Cold War Assault you can download and play right now - the classic open-world sandbox, vehicles, AI and mission system that defined a genre, running on a clean, modern codebase.
> An official asset pack
> The demo doubles as a sanctioned asset pack for the Arma community. The bundled game data is provided as raw material you are free to study, modify and build new Arma content from. If you have ever wanted to learn how a Bohemia game is put together, or wanted clean reference assets to start a mod, this is for you.
I actually worked on the Poseidon engine back when I was at BISim for serious game Virtual Battlespace 2 (VBS2) which was the spin off built for military training.
The codebase here is so much cleaner and better organized than the version I remember wrestling with on a daily basis, and if you remember how buggy and unstable the DayZ launch was for users it can all be traced back to this since it was never envisioned to live as long and scale as far as it did. Fun fact Poseidon was the original internal game name they were building in 1999 before changing the game name and renaming the engine to Real Virtuality.
It's also easy to forget just how far ahead of its time this was since this shipped large open worlds with maps that were 12.5 km × 12.5 km and that was really easy to mod with a runtime scripting language SQF, not a separate mission editor. This was all in 2001, which is three years before Half-Life 2 would come out.
Wait, did you work in the Orlando office? ;)
I worked with a guy at the Research Park in Central Florida who used to work for Bohemia Interactive (I forget on what). That's kind of funny, I remember him noting that it was a PITA to work with the Arma codebase.
Yes, that was the the place, I was one of the first engineers in that office but we got up to about 50 full-time devs at the peak before they started getting moved over to Europe for lower cost labor.
It was a total PITA to work with but not due to the engine itself but some choices that were made over time to use IN CODE FEATURE SWITCHES since it was before git and branches. There were thousands of features added and controlled with statements like this:
#define ENABLE_FEATURE
#ifdef ENABLE_FEATURE // New feature implemented #else // Old code that is left around but probabbly won't work if the feature gets disabled #endif
Then multiply this choice by every...single...line...of code that had to be changed for one feature. It was nightmare until we could adopt and transition to Git with branches and clean it up.
Hehe, yeah I'm not sure when John Stewart would have worked there or what the pain points were for him, but he worked there for a bit. I met him when we both worked for KeyW (which got bought out by Jacobs) back in 2017. I think Bohemia is still in Orlando, I met someone in 2021 ish that was trying to get me to apply to work there, but I had just become the tech lead for the eCommerce Platform at Red Lobster at the time so I passed on that suggestion, plus I was fully remote.
That does sound like a nightmare to work with, especially since there's a lot of context switching going on too. Too much mental overhead.
The team is still there. BISim was sold to BAE Systems now and they go by OneArc (onearc.com).
I discovered Arma 2 when I was around 12. Its insane how much content was created with the limitations of the game engine. I also got into SWE partly due to hacking together SQF scripts :)
I'm a bit younger than you (started playing at ~17), but I attribute SQF in Arma 2 and Arma 3 being my gateway drug into SWE too :)
Not only Bohemia Interactive released the code, they cleaned it up and ported to Windows x64 and Linux x64. That's amazing.
I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for Bohemia Interactive. Their games have always had a charming “designed by a software engineer” feel, which I appreciate.
Also, Operation Flashpoint was the reason I learnt to code and ended up having a career a software engineer, so I owe BI for that. My first real foray into programming was writing scripts, specifically to trigger unguided bomb releases from planes onto moving ground targets using some shoddy trigonometry as a 14 year old kid.
I have a lot of fond memories of that game. I still remember being awed by some of the mods created by this guy: https://kegetys.fi His name has lived rent free in my head for 2 decades now. Legend.
An Arma mod on my resume helped me eke out the interview for my first full time tech job. As janky as the engine was, I have a soft spot for it. It's a game/platform that _wants_ the user to customize it and have a stake in its technology.
Funny, I had a similar experience. I wrote a script that enabled players to "call in" mortar support, by looking at the target and selecting a distance. Also using shoddy trigonometry and also one of my earliest programming experiences. Very basic from today's perspective, but I was mighty proud back then and so hooked!
Same here; I remember playing ARMA 3 during the early-2013 public alpha, which was an eye-opening look at how the gaming sausage is made in real time (and before Early Access was as established a concept as it is now).
I was rather disappointed when I heard that they had been acquired by BAE Systems, but on further inspection it seems like that was only the BI Simulations arm (responsible for VBS), now rebranded as OneArc. My guess is that a release like this wouldn't have happened were they not still independent.
BISim and Bohemia Interactive were separate companies, there was no ownership relationship between them.
Seconded. I applaud BI for doing such a clean open source release. So many things to learn from!
I wish other game studios would release their software so many years after release.
I was a member of the arma 3 on unix (mostly linux) community before Proton was released and somewhat usable. The BI community managers were very forthcoming when we had questions and they also enabled proton support for battleye as soon as it became feasable. Definitely not the worst game studio regarding linux support.
Not being a big gamer, I can'comment with much authority. I've played a bunch of Modern Warfare(s) and Battlefields, and Squad. But they all feel pointless to me when ARMA 3 exists.
It's _so_ janky but in my mind way more immersive for reasons I just can't fully explain, though they are something to do with the fact that good comms is the key to fun and success. It's also got a pretty major learning curve...
COD/Battlefield and Arma are two different genres. Squad is somewhat in Arma's genre. I can't stand Arma's movement anymore. The closest thing I've found to the unique parts of Arma is Hell Let Loose
playing on a certain private server using sog:pf cdlc + the alive mod with a group of people who knew our shit was genuinely some of the most intense and immersive gaming experiences i have ever had.
you're pinned down as a 10 person group in a jungle clearing, everyone hunkering down behind some fallen down trees cos that's your only cover ... you're surrounded by enemy in all directions, the whole team is running low on ammo, tracer rounds flying over everyone's heads, your medic is wounded and trying to patch himself up ... you're trying to call in air support using only grids and compass bearing desperately hoping that you've got the grids right and the human pilots don't fuck it up and wipe out the whole team ... you've gotta try to organize some sort of extract helo in all of this mess, but chances are they'll get shot down if they try to extract you here ... suddenly mortar rounds start going off all around you because the ai have communicated your location back to the mortar installation you were trying to recon ...
as team lead, what do you do? what's your decision? how are we getting out of this mess? you don't get to think, there's no time to think, thinking is death. what do you do?
so fucking cool.
Did ShackTac for a while. I agree but also in so many ways it's not immersive at all.
Like all the years the physics were just busted and tanks would flip over and explode because the engine couldn't handle the terrain geometry. Really sucks the fun out of your all-night commitment when that ends your mission for the night "because realism".
Getting a vehicle squad assigment was pretty much an 80% chance this was going to happen to you at some point.
Very eye opening experience though. It's disturbingly easy to mess up your navigation and radio comms and start having friendly squads shooting each other when obscured by trees... The wrong squad leader (and/or inattentive teammates) will get you killed as fast as anything.
If you want to learn rigid comms discipline, that is the right place to learn it.
I agree. I've played Arma 3 for more than a whole decade now. Most of it comes down to the open large scale combined arms experience not being available in any other recent video game from a first/third person perspective. There's now Arma Reforger, but it understandably lacks content.
The community makes the game. The actual game is much less important.
The learning curve just acts as a filter that results in more like-minded people sticking with it.
That's kinda scary then considering how toxic some of the chat is! For me I think I simultaneously like the irreverence, but also the fact people take it very seriously. It's a weird combination. But yeah, sometimes the banter is not good.
stay away from official / public servers, find communities via discords etc that play the way you think you might like. some of the bigger communities have rules against the kind of toxic you get on public servers etc.
it's the same with dayz.
Operation Flashpoint (for anyone who bought it on release back in the day).
It was later turned into the Arma series and re-released with this name to fit the series branding.
I've played them all - this was the best of the lot IMHO.
I think Bohemia parted ways with their publisher Codemasters, who retained the Operation Flashpoint trademark.
I'm a bit sad they never managed to make an equally enjoyable campaign in any of the later installments.
Multiplayer is nice for others I guess, but not really for me.
IMHO the ARMA3 campaign is quite alright (once you realize how much freedom you have between the missions), also the Contact DLC was pretty great IMHO.
But where ARMA3 really shines is single-player sandbox mods like DUWS-X.
Judging from steam comments, seems like that creator passed away recently. RIP
WASM port: https://motionmark.itch.io/poseidonwasm
I believe this game had some interesting anti cheat, it would still let you play if it knew it was cracked but would just make your aim worse and worse until you gave up.
It was copyright protection, not anti cheat, and I thought it was fun/interesting as well!
It was called FADE <https://kotaku.com/now-this-is-how-copy-protection-should-be...>
It had, another thing is that it used somewhat questionable system for CD key validation, which is stubbed out in this release (https://github.com/BohemiaInteractive/CWR/blob/main/engine/P...).
One thing is 120bit RSA (readily broken with a graphing calculator at the time of release), another thing is the provenance of the RSA implementation code in the original binary.
what is provenance?
I think that was arma 2. It also turned the player into a pigeon after a while.
I learned HTML thanks to Operation Flashpoint so that I could write mission briefings in the editor...one thing led to another, and I have a successful career as a software developer. Thanks, Bohemia Interactive.
I remember the day I bought that game at my local dealer. It looked amazing and nobody told me about it, my friends were playing FFVII and stuff like that. After installing it, it was mindblowing, the mission editor was incredible with infinite possibilities. When you think about it, that engine and it's SDK were really advanced features and concepts. I mean Rainbow Six had a mission planner, but OPF, with it's editor and addons was an inifinite sandbox. Good memories.
I used to open up mods (I seem to recall them being in "PBO" files) and tweaked around the script code to change things and make my own weapons and such. Also a formative experience on my path to becoming a developer.
This is great, I wish more studios would do the same with their games, and also under the GPL3.0
This game was on my cousin's dad PC about 20 years ago. There were no name on the icon, it was just titled "war" (assumingly by cousin). Later I got Arma: Armed Assault on Steam, when all my friends played Arma 2/DayZ and I couldn't, because my PC was a potato. Spent hours on sandbox editor making big warfare.
- would love to see some ubisoft games like this from old times like splinter cell 1,2,3
this game was quite popular here in Estonia
Also anybody remember when this used to be called Operation Flashpoint ?
it had this weird paperish/dried out flat texture look that was quite characteristic and major appeal for me.
even now im amazed how much depth this game has , many many fun nights online
Ahh, another interesting post… and it’s Dewey again.
This is what stop killing games seek turned up to 11.
From Steam demo description:
> This release is free, and it is two things at once.
> A playable demo
> A self-contained slice of Cold War Assault you can download and play right now - the classic open-world sandbox, vehicles, AI and mission system that defined a genre, running on a clean, modern codebase.
> An official asset pack
> The demo doubles as a sanctioned asset pack for the Arma community. The bundled game data is provided as raw material you are free to study, modify and build new Arma content from. If you have ever wanted to learn how a Bohemia game is put together, or wanted clean reference assets to start a mod, this is for you.